: The extra twists and turns

The biggest difference between Liu Bei's construction of the canal and Yang Guang's construction of the canal in history is of course that he does what he can and never takes too much attention from the people.

In fact, engineering infrastructure may not cause much harm to the people of the world. The key is to master the urgent problem.

If a canal that lasts thousands of miles can be completed in one year, it will definitely be full of complaints.

If the intensity is reduced to 500 miles, you can dig for two years. You can avoid the busy farming period at the wrong time and provide good price subsidies and stability. The people will work hardest at most, but they will never die on a large scale or even rebellion.

After the DPRK set a new downgrade, the short early summer slack season soon entered, so there was no time to delay. Basically, the plan had just been in place and some of the money and grain had just been allocated. Local governments had already been asked to start work in a hurry, so that every day of slack farming was not wasted.

Li Su has been taking a long vacation in recent years and has been working hard for a long time. Now he has a rare big project. He also has to work hard himself and use his extraordinary math and overall knowledge to control the entire project to minimize the efforts.

Li Su personally read various reports, statistics, and accounts every day. In May, he left Luoyang and briefly went to Yecheng to inspect the front line to deal with specific issues.

When it was approaching late summer, the weather was hot and the farming became busy again, Li Su left the front line and returned to Luoyang to report, rest, and prepared to wait for the autumn harvest before shifting the focus of the work back to the specific canal excavation work.

The first summer slack season after the start of construction was pretty good. The mileage of the canal that was successfully dug was 30 to 40 miles, and more river sections were completed in preliminary land preparation, and the total project volume was nearly 20%.

Considering that the slack season in winter is longer and the number of time for civilians to serve is much longer, it is normal for them to practice more every winter than in summer.

However, during the whole process, Li Su also missed the past few years - when, whether it was the excavation of the Nanyang Canal or the later Ruying Anti-Lu Canal, the one who was responsible for the overall planning and account verification, was actually Zhuge Liang.

After all, Zhuge Liang's math and coordination skills are now beyond his reach, and Zhuge Liang is more careful and energetic than Li Su.

On the land of the Han Dynasty, anyone who wants to make fake accounts or the project progress is delayed without knowing it, usually cannot escape Zhuge Liang's eyes and ears.

Now, because Zhuge Liang's term in Fusang and Sanhan was longer than Li Su, he did not return to the Central Plains at the first time, which made Li Suting miss him. Otherwise, his burden would be easier.

Liu Ba and Fa Zheng did not reach the level of Zhuge Liang's internal affairs coordination, while Lu Su and Gu Yong focused on the big and let go of the small, and were not professional enough.

The one who is currently responsible for overall coordination of this canal project is still responsible for the farming and construction affairs of the Han Dynasty for many years. The one who is responsible for the dispatch of military engineer troops and maintaining order is General Gao Shun of Zhendong. Other officials are all helping these two people.

This team is not bad, but it is still a little worse than Zhuge Liang's central dispatch.

Li Su thinks that the difference can be roughly quantified in this way: if Zhuge Liang is allowed to coordinate the overall situation, he will probably spend hundreds of millions less, and he will lose a lot of money by being greedy for the upper and lower his efforts, and he will also die thousands of people less.

There is no doubt that people will die when building a canal. Hundreds of thousands of men came over, not only accidental casualties but also infectious diseases caused by many people.

The same goes for the same sentence: in 1900, the Americans would die from 200 to 40,000 people to build the Panama Canal. At the end of the 20th century, many domestic commercial housing construction sites were finally completed in a few years, and some people would have died.

What's more, 1700 or 800 years earlier, Li Su made another trick in technology and management. In addition, the project volume of the Hebei Canal is indeed an order of magnitude lower than that of Panama, but 30,000 people died, which is probably inevitable.

If Zhuge Liang is not Zhuge Liang, the difference is only a few thousand lives. He can come, and 30,000 can be defeated to more than 20,000.

Li Su took advantage of the hot weather in the late summer and remembered to inquire about the progress of Zhuge Liang.

Zhuge Liang managed "Pingzhou" and his term was only three years, which was one year longer than Li Su's voyage tour, so it was time to end his life.

The reason why I didn't come back was probably because I was waiting for the monsoon. The sea route was not very smooth due to weather reasons, so it was delayed.

After all, for the important officials of Li Su and Zhuge Liang, safety is the first priority.

The whistle ships responsible for reporting the messages, and even merchants' merchant ships, may be able to sail in the season at risk of typhoons, but Li Su, Zhuge Liang absolutely cannot.

Zhuge Liang himself cannot come back for the time being, which does not mean that the news from Fusang and Central Plains has been interrupted.

After delaying communication, Li Su finally learned that Zhuge Liang would return to Central Plains after the end of this year's typhoon season, and would come to Luoyang to report his duties as soon as possible and receive a new appointment.

Li Su calculated that Zhuge Liang should be able to catch up with the slack season of winter and the construction period for the whole year next year, so he felt relieved.

At the same time, after receiving Zhuge Liang's exact reply, Li Su went to see Liu Bei as soon as possible and told him about the situation privately, hoping that Liu Bei would be mentally prepared to see if he would make a final adjustment to Zhuge Liang's official position arrangement.

Zhuge Liang is back this year and is already thirty years old. According to the original plan, he can be ranked in the third public level.

However, as the court gradually deepened the reform of the official system in recent years, the three dukes' etiquette and treatment attributes became stronger and stronger. In fact, government affairs were divided into more than the Shangshu, the Shizhong and the ministers, and the superiors were directly responsible for the prime minister who held the power.

Li Su was not here before, and this situation was a little better. Some positions in the Three Dukes can occasionally act as prime minister. After Li Su personally resumed power this year, the Three Dukes' regression is inevitable.

Therefore, Liu Bei originally planned to Zhuge Liang that after returning to the Central Plains, he had accumulated enough three years of experience in Qingxu's local governance and three years of experience in pacifying the Three Han Fusang, and could be directly promoted to Shizhong and basically the same level as Shangshu Ling Xun You.

The previous Shizhong Ju Su was a surrendered minister after all. Although he could also retain his treatment, he would only play the role of helping Zhuge Liang check for omissions in the future, similar to the consultant of the Shizhong position, checking.

Moreover, Ju Su was older after all, and older than Xun You and the others. In history, he was killed in the chaos after the Battle of Guandu for trying to escape to Yuan's camp.

Now in 210 years, Ju Su has lived ten years longer than his original fate, and gradually he has a problem of his energy decline in old age. No one will say anything even if he retreats to the second line.

However, so far, the power level between the "Shangshu Ling" and "Shi Zhong" is only administratively de facto, and the theoretical treatment of the two is still different.

The main problem is that the court system does not stipulate that the position of "Shizhong" is only allowed to be one person, and multiple Shizhongs can coexist.

Therefore, after the treatment problem is solved justly, the control of the court center can be considered to be officially transformed into the original "three provinces and six ministries system" in later generations.

This time, Li Su planned to strike while the iron was hot and solve this legitimate problem.

He suggested to Liu Bei that he would take the opportunity to select a regular post among several "Shizhong" people, and be responsible for coordinating the administrative execution departments of the entire court center in the name of "Zhongshu Ling" which was originally a low-ranking position in the Western Han Dynasty.

In this way, the Shangshu Ling manages the "conclusion of administrative regulations" and the Zhongshu Ling manages the "actual implementation of administration", which is legitimate and equal.

Liu Bei felt awkward at first, mainly because the official position of "Zhongshu Ling" was originally not of high rank, and some years were abandoned in the middle. Now he has been brought back and suddenly raised his status. He is afraid that everyone will still have stereotypes and cannot reverse their cognition.

But Li Su analyzed: When the "Shangshu Ling" was just established, the rank was not high, but the real power was large. It was a special product of the separation of internal and external dynasties from Emperor Wu of Han. Now, after three hundred years, with the reunification of internal and external dynasties, isn't it also regarded as "like the Three Dukes"?

Therefore, as long as the emperor wants to change things, it can still be changed easily.

Only then did Liu Bei accept it, saying that after the autumn harvest, he would look for a special date for discussion and take the opportunity to discuss this issue.

Therefore, when Zhuge Liang officially returned to China and completed his report, he would become the first Zhongshu Ling after the Sanxing period of the Han Dynasty at the age of 30.

In the next ten years, his resume will be obvious. It is nothing more than switching between the Secretary of the Central Committee and the Secretary of the Communist Party of China, and thoroughly familiarizing the specific work of legislation and administration so that he can take over Li Su's job in the future.

Of course, Zhuge Liang must not think about the highest position as prime minister before Li Su retires. Even if Li Su actually left most of his work to him, he could only be honest and nameless.

There is nothing I can do about this, and Zhuge Liang wouldn't mind. If there is something, the disciple will be convinced. His mentor is still in the career of the government, and it is already the best state for his disciple to be one step away from the Prime Minister.

Moreover, Zhuge Liang knew that when he became prime minister in the future, there might not be a third prime minister in the future. This is a huge recognition of him.

...

It was soon autumn, and Zhuge Liang's schedule for returning to the Central Plains had been finalized, but the people had not arrived yet.

In the court, there was a wave of pain feedback on the issuance of new bonds and the construction of large-scale construction.

After all, at the beginning, I was fooled by Liu Bei and Li Su's double act and agreed to start the project. The more or less the meaning of being in a hurry to follow the power is a "city alliance" that I have to do. After the recovery comes, the backlash will definitely continue.

Anyone who has done big projects knows that during the project progress, accidents and emergencies occur almost every day. Especially when the canal is built, as long as there is an accident one day and there are more people dead, someone will point fingers.

Many court officials once again scrutinized and wrote a letter to Liu Bei, proposing that they should control the scale of the project, or extend the construction period and reduce other expenses.

Liu Bei humbly accepted advice on acceptable fine-tuning, and the principled issue was to insist on being tough.

In this game, many rumors and malicious speculation also happen from time to time.

The imperial court cannot be a high-pressure person who cannot make people talk about it, after all, it is better than defending Sichuan.

Some court officials began to figure out the emperor's mentality, thinking that "this year is the emperor's fifty birthday. It's almost his birthday. After discussing with the Prime Minister, His Majesty wants to do more while he still has the energy to do more, so he is eager to promote construction and use of troops to the outside world."

Some people also analyzed that the emperor did not want to deal with the issue with the Xianbei Wuhuan when the heroes and generals in the War of Restoration of the Unification of Zhongxing.

I am afraid of suffering twice in the future and being punished twice, so I have to train the new army to solve the Xianbei.

After all, the war in the Han Dynasty has completely ended, and there are not many famous generals and elite soldiers in the later period. They have not recruited new soldiers in the past eight years, and have been raising veterans in a semi-army state.

The first elite troops under Liu Bei's command of the order of 100,000 were formed in 194, when he was in the northern expedition to Chang'an and expelled Li Jue and Guo Si.

Going further forward, although Liu Bei had an armed force of 10,000 to 30,000 people, the number was too small. Those people were still alive and were already officers and would not be front-line soldiers, so it doesn’t matter if they were older, so they didn’t need to be careful.

According to this algorithm, the most of these front-line soldiers who still exist as soldiers or sergeant soldiers have been in service for 16 years, including the training period, which may be eighteen years.

Even if the Han Dynasty did not join the army at the age of twenty, but to the age of eighteen or even sixteen, then these people are now at least between thirty-five and forty years old.

If you are older when you join the army, for example, if you are nearly thirty years old, you are now in your 50s.

As ordinary soldiers, physical fitness and energy are very important. They rely on physical strength to fight, and when they are older, their combat effectiveness will inevitably decline.

If there are another five, six years and seven or eight years, even the troops that were used to expand their troops during the war will face aging and physical decline.

Liu Bei obviously hoped to solve the big problem with a lower cost before this group of elite soldiers lost their combat effectiveness.

This idea is the same as the reasons emphasized in Zhuge Liang's "The Memorial of Later" in history:

"From the time I arrived in Hanzhong, I was in the middle of my life, but I lost Zhao Yun, Yang Qun, Ma Yu, Yan Zhi, Ding Li, Bai Shou, Liu He, Deng Tong and Qu Chang, and more than 70 generals were stationed. The sudden generals were invincible, and more than 1,000 people were killed in the army. "

On the other hand, Yuan Shao died naturally in this time and space, but he died earlier than in history, and he was only in his fifties.

Cao Cao committed suicide by defeat and died eighteen years early. In history, Cao Cao should have lived to be 66 years old, but now it is 48.

Considering the emperors of the Eastern Han Dynasty, only Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu lived 63 years old, and the second-longest-lived Emperor Ming of Han, Liu Zhuang, was only forty-eight years old.

Liu Bei has been lustful in recent years, and his harem is not restrained, and he has many concubines and more descendants. These are all aims that cannot be concealed by the important officials of the court.

Some people began to wonder whether Liu Bei felt that after he lived to his fifty birthday, he would feel insecure, which further indirectly promoted his accelerated construction of military and military forces...

After all, Li Su knew that even if Liu Bei was attacked by Yiling, he could live 63, but others didn't know that. The general short life of the Han emperors made people wrong expectations.
Chapter completed!